Today, Friday 25th January 2019, 15 of the 18 defendants in the “Basel”-process have been found guilty of willful damage of property, actual bodily harm, breach of the peace, multiple acts of violence, threats against public authorities and officials and breach of the traffic laws. The preposterous sentence ranges from 20 months conditionally to two years, up to 27 months unconditionally. Thereby the three judges of the criminal court of Basel city followed the claims of the prosecution in most parts. Some persons even had to pay an additional fine of 200,000 Swiss franks for the violation of the ban on wearing face coverings, as well as individual fines – between five and ten daily fines in lieu of jail time – for insults, violation of the gun control law, trespassing or hindrance to an offical act.

The amounts of the fines seems even more preposterous in the light of the court rating various charges of the prosecution as unfulfilled (e.g. multiple attempted severe assaults, raids or disturbances against the public transport). The main cause therefor was, that the court held on to the controversial construct of co-offendership – for all to bear the blame equally – and in their verdict supported this intensified interpretation. Read the rest of this entry »

During the night and the morning of Tuesday, February 19, 2019, seven anarchists were arrested in various places in Trentino (Italy): Agnese, Giulio, Nico, Poza, Rupert, Sasha, Stecco. One person (Sasha) was placed under house arrest while all the others were imprisoned in various prisons. The main accusations are “subversive association for the purpose of terrorism and subversion of the democratic order” (article 270bis of the penal code) and “terrorist attack” (article 280 of the penal code), with reference to some direct actions that took place in Trentino during the last few years. Other offenses of which they are accused are: “interruption of public service”, “damage”, “sabotage of telematic devices”, “fire” and “transport of exploding material”. Read the rest of this entry »

Unfortunately, Italy has a long history of repressive operations against anarchists. Since Operation Marini in 90s, the waves of repression against comrades, which brought into jail many people with charges of terrorism or criminal association, were countless. Just to name a few of the biggest repressive operations: Cervantes, Croce Nera, Ardire, Mangiafuoco, Thor, Ixodidae, Nottetempo, Fuoriluogo…

These operations usually lead to several house raids in all Italy and to the arrest of several comrades who spend 1 or 2 years in pre-trial detention. Then they face trials with charges of ‘association’ and usually they are also accused of several direct actions for which the inquisitors never found any responsible. Sometimes the public engagement of these comrades in the anarchist struggle and their open expression of anarchist ideas (direct actions support, prisoners solidarity, running an anarchist magazine or website and so on) is the only evidence that the prosecutors bring into the court. For this reason, in the majority of the cases all the accused are later acquitted at the trial, but only after having spent many months or years in prison.

Besides these huge operations, there is a constant small-scale repression against local anarchist groups which are especially active on the territory, for example with struggles against police repression, evictions, detention centres for migrants, jails, gentrification, corporate interests… In these cases anarchists are constantly repressed with recurring trials and spend much of their time going in and out of prison, house arrest or other restrictions of their freedom. This kind of police strategy of trying to burn out comrades with the aim of destroying the local anarchist group happens in many cities but since many years has been especially strong in Torino. Read the rest of this entry »

In moments like these, we stand together. Regardless of whether the comrades are «guilty» or «innocent». The state will always persecute those who want to overthrow it. So let’s take good care of each other and don’t leave the prisoners alone!

In closing, we would like to quote a part of the accusations that led to the arrest of the comrades in Turin:
“In order to establish contacts within CPR [Immigration and Repatriation Centre], they threw tennis balls with a multilingual brochure and a mobile phone number with which they agreed simultaneous actions within and outside the CPR structure. Then they put matches and everything needed to start a revolt and setting fire in packages of biscuits and other goods.”

Unoffensive Animal was born out of the necessity to inspire activists. After complaining about how the radical left has an incline to disregard veganism and qualify it as classist and colonialist, and after feeling completely disheartened by animal rights activists disregarding human issues, we decided to create a media outlet able to bring both sides and to help radicalise activists.

Unoffensive Animal is an anarchist collective. We are non-profit and strongly anti capitalist. We are queer and/or queer allies. We are antifascists. We are vegan, animal liberationists and we have even been called forest “jihadis”. We stand against animal exploitation and against human exploitation. We oppose racism, bigotry and nationalism. We believe in direct action, but we also believe in diversity of tactics. We know that human liberation is animal liberation and that animal liberation will never happen under capitalism. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s obvious that techno-industrial progress is advancing and with it the impact on nature is becoming stronger and more irreversible…

We won’t take a reformist and conformist attitude in the face of this situation, now less than ever as the ‘ecologist’ struggle has been absorbed by governmental institutions and platform groups, which prepared the ground for a new form of irrational consumerism, depicted as ‘ecological’, ‘green’… (sic) so as to allow companies to make profits at the cost of the destruction of the planet and all the beings who inhabit it… as hypocritical happiness and tranquillity dominated the end of the year festivities, we preferred to prepare and carry out an attack with an explosive device at dawn on 1st January, against a Ford Gimsa car showroom situated in Mexico-Texcoco Carretera in Reyes a la Paz, which caused damage to the façade and to some cars that were parked there… with this action we express solidarity with the comrades on the run in this territory under surveillance and with the Argentinian comrades who are been subjected to a wave of repression following an explosion; this attack is also part of a coordination of attacks in several areas of the country and responds to a call for agitation and attack.

On Thursday 7 February 2019, at 4:40 a.m., the eviction of the squat “Asilo occupato” (“the occupied kindergarden”) in Via Alessandria 12 in Turin, occupied since 1995, began. The eviction was carried out as part of the “Operazione Scintilla” (“Operation Spark”). Several hundred
Carabinieri in riot gear, police officers and Guardia di finanza with machine guns and plain clothes police not only evicted the house, but also arrested six anarchists. A seventh person is still being searched for.

The charges are serious: formation of a subversive association, incitement to crime and the possession, manufacture and transportation of explosives in a public place. The charges are related to the resistance against the Italian migration regime, namely against the deportation camps/prisons CPR and CIE (Centro per l’Immigrazione e il Rimpatrio = Immigration and Repatriation Centre; Centro di identificazione ed espulsione = Identification and Deportation Centre), more information below. Read the rest of this entry »

Solidarity fund for imprisoned and persecuted militants is a structure from Greece, which for the past 9 years has been actively organizing the political, ethical and material support of imprisoned and persecuted revolutionaries. Due to the immense amount of money we have to collect and send _each month_ to the imprisoned comrades in order to cover their needs inside the prisons, and thus the tough financial situation we’re facing, we decided to use the firefund platform.

Firefund is an online crowdsourcing platform, run by activists, in order to fund radical causes. You can donate safely either by using credit card or with cryptocurrency (ether). Also if you want you can choose to contribute an amount to the team that administrates the platform.

You can find more info about us and why we choose to use firefund in the link.

The contribution of each and every one who wants to help our cause is ESSENTIAL. While we also believe that it’s rather important to forward this initiative to anyone with whom we may not have contact with. To any comrade/collective who stand with solidarity against oppression.

This is the fourth issue of ‘Vetriolo’. Four issues are certainly not a few for a publication such as this. Rather than accumulate and reinforce certitudes, we believe the paper has tried to corrode and crush them, as it posed new doubts and nourished old questions. Certainly not out of a
mere taste for rhetoric or polemics, but because we think that there are always a lot of ‘knots to be untied’. At the same time we think that it’s necessary to reflect and analyse, a difficult task which is certainly not opposed to the corrosive demolition of certitudes; on the contrary it’s complementary to it. In these reflections and analyses we have always maintained that reality is not an incomprehensible enigma, contrary to what those who want to impose their resignation on us have always stated. So in this issue we also tried to analyse the current reality, and in particular we wanted to do so by proposing some hypotheses, besides carrying on the reflections and analyses which characterized previous issues with more or less extended theoretical articles alongside articles of agitation and topicality. To the readers their own considerations. We reiterate and remind, once again, that this paper is neither an aseptic intellectual product nor a container of opinions and points of view. Precisely because it doesn’t intend to close itself up in easy answers, shout solutions ready for consumption or brandish pre-arranged theses, this is an instrument which can imply a lively involvement with the ideas it affirms, and we always wish this is the case.

2 euros per copy. For distributors: 1.50 euros per copy for orders of five and more copies. Postal fees in Italy: 1.30 euros (up to 2 kilograms). Free for prisoners. Issues 0, 1 and 2 are still available.

At the dawn of Thursday 20/12/2018 an unpleasant surprise roiled the whole family of Aggelos Giannakopoulos, boss of “Horiatiko” and “Attica Bakeries” baker’s shops, at the family apartment building of 29 Heraklion Avenue in Ano Patisia. Three of the family’s cars were wrapped in flames, the front was damaged and the windows of the ground floor were broken. The forementioned dorm is the same building where, years ago, Giannakopoulos bros were imprisoning, blackmailing and prostituting women from the Eastern Bloc, in their owned lap-dancing clubs, at private appointments, as well as in sleazy “bars” all over Greece.

Police stories…

In the summer of 2007, cops, prosecutors and Department of Financial Crime auditors bust in the said block of flats. In the press, information is leaked that Angelos Giannakopoulos is the head of an international trafficking network. The pimps with the synergy of employment agencies in Eastern European countries were bringing women, withholding their credentials, and selling their bodies to punters. Despite the “coordinated” operation, the two Giannakopoulos brothers get away, while dozens of smaller fish are captured, among them the name of retired cop Konstantinos Kyrou being exposed. The network’s profits were laundered in dozens of “legal” bakeries and shops of Giannakopoulos bros and with the facility of an off-shore company. In addition, those wanted are accused of trafficking of minor and adult women, abduction, injuries, drug trafficking, forgery and money laundering. The next act of the drama is played sixteen months later in November 2008 when a second police operation for the activities of Giannakopoulos is conducted, in cooperation with Interpol (as well as the first time). Read the rest of this entry »